They may not be the most fashionable club around but Birmingham City are really punching above their weight in the Premier League. Right now they are in seventh position tied with Liverpool on points and the person who has made the real difference to this team is their Scottish manager Alex McLeish. He has really impressed me – he gets the best out of his players and strikes me as an excellent man manager.

Just look at what he has done with Lee Bowyer who is playing ever so well right now.

Birmingham are on a five-game winning streak and that says a lot about this club who don't have a lot of money – certainly not the money of Manchester City, Chelsea or Manchester United.

McLeish has his team playing as a unit – they can be tough to break down as West Ham found out last weekend when we lost 1-0.

And then in midweek Birmingham beat Blackburn 2-1.

Of course, it is only Christmas and there is a long way to go. Whether Birmingham can keep up their recent good form remains to be seen but they certainly look a solid side right now.

One team I want to see steady the ship is my boys, West Ham. We are struggling and need some wins to get out of the relegation zone. We have had three defeats in a row and I don't think it is going to get any easier this weekend when we host leaders Chelsea.

The Blues have not had things go their way either. Although they beat Portsmouth midweek 2-1, Chelsea had gone four matches without a victory and they will be eager to keep their lead over Manchester United who visit Fulham today.

West Ham have had a string of injuries and the other day Dean Ashton was forced to hang up his boots after failing to recover from an injury. We need people like Ashton but the big problem is we have had to sell players and there is no money coming in. The Hammers are in a financial crisis and what we need is someone to come in and buy us.

I heard that former owners of Birmingham, David Gold and David Sullivan, were hoping to buy the club and that would have been great except that the Icelandic bank controlling West Ham had its debt repayments frozen until September. I don't know where we will go from here.

Last year when Zola came into the manager's position he did a good job getting the club out of the relegation zone to ninth place. Hopefully he can do the same job this season.

Wolves are right with us in the relegation zone but they had a great victory over Spurs last weekend before going down to Manchester United midweek. Wolves manager Mick McCarthy has taken some stick this week for fielding a weakened team at Old Trafford but McCarthy wanted to rest his best players for the match against Burnley this weekend.

Arsene Wenger was particularly upset about McCarthy putting out a weakened side but I don't know what the French manager is talking about. Every manager and every club have chopped and changed things around to suit themselves. Obviously McCarthy felt that he has a better chance of picking up three points against Burnley than taking three at Old Trafford – and he is right.

Top American striker Landon Donovan was given permission by the LA Galaxy to play abroad in the off season.

Donovan, who was named as the MLS most valuable player this season, has played abroad before in Germany. He didn't have a great time of it but now he's going to Everton.

Donovan is a very good and skilful player but I don't know how he will do in England. He will not have the time on the ball that he likes and the game in England is also very physical.

Not that many people talk about it but the final of the Club World Cup in the UAE will be on today.

It will be Barcelona against Argentine club Estudiantes and while the earlier matches in this tournament may not have been too much to shout about, this final should be entertaining.

I always like to see how the South American clubs do against the top European clubs. Barca will make a big mistake if they take Estudiantes lightly.

Barca are going to miss playmaker Iniesta who injured himself in Wednesday's 3-1 semi-final victory over Mexican club Atlante. Messi started on the bench in that game but came on and not surprisingly made all the difference, scoring a very good goal.